10 Dysfunctional Literary Families We’d Secretly Like to Join

You know the quote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Whether you believe Tolstoy or not, there’s something alluring about dysfunctional families, especially when they’re strictly literary. This week saw the release of Mark Haddon’s newest novel The Red House, the story of a family cooped up in a country house together for a week of what should be vacation, but ends up being full of family secrets, personal revelations, and complex dynamics. All that aside, we realized that we wouldn’t mind being part of their tragicomedy, and we got to thinking about some of our other favorite literary families that we sort of wish would adopt us. Click through to see which fictional families we picked, and let us know which ones you’d choose in the comments.

It’s not every day a couple of ex-vaudeville performers span a brood of genius offspring. As tortured and dangerously precocious as they all are, we’d love to be wedged in with all the Glass children, if only so we could see how they think. Plus, then we’d obviously get to be on It’s a Wise Child, one of our most dearly held dreams.